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Paul Nelson reportingThis may be the wrong question to ask the morning listeners, but, are you getting enough sleep?
When I hit the streets in Salt Lake City, almost everyone I spoke with said they weren't getting enough. One man said he only gets about five hours a night. Another man said he works too hard to get enough.
One woman told me she gets four hours of sleep at night at the most.
She said, "I am a night person and so I stay awake for a very long time. Either that, or I get extraordinarily exhausted and I can't sleep." She added, "I'll be lying in my bed, but I can't sleep." Basically, she can't sleep because she's too tired.
Recent studies have shown a link between health problems and not getting enough sleep. Now, a new study from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention links getting too much sleep and health issues like obesity.
University of Utah Sleep-Wake Center Medical Director Dr. Christopher Jones said, "Sleeping too much usually means that they weren't sleeping enough for a few nights before they slept a long time."
Jones says the study shows a statistical link between too much sleep and health problems, but not much else.
"The authors were careful to point out that the kind of study they did could not prove cause and effect," he said.
The good news is Jones says excessive sleep rarely leads to other problems. At least that's what he's seen in his practice. The bad news is Jones says it could be a sign of other problems.
"People who are in very poor health are likely to sleep more than average because of their poor health," he said.
But, he says it's common for people to get that feeling of fatigue from sleeping too much. Matter of fact, it has a scientific name.
"The scientific term for that is sleep inertia. For example, once the bowling ball gets rolling it tends to keep rolling all the way down the alley," he said.
Jones says sleep cycles act the same way. Once they get going, they want to finish. However, Jones say the medical cause for this still baffles sleep experts.
E-mail: pnelson@ksl.com
